I thought there would be a LOT more to this adventure. Instead, it's almost entirely setting info AND not the useful kind that gives you locations you can drop into your campaign. I was very disappointed.

"What happens if you take Cowboy Bebop, the celebrated anime, and make it into an RPG? Well, in this case, something kind of magical." - Aaron Marks.

Read the full CHG review here.

I love this game. It has fresh easy mechanics that put the character in charge of just how much risk they want to use to get actions done. The art in the book is amazing, the text is easy to read, beautiful formatting. If I had any criticism it is that the resolution mechanic (time to draw the tokens) takes a little longer than rolling dice, but the outcomes make it worth it. I hope this game gets some press via online reviews soon.

As one who purchased this map pack and battles beyond the sea and the rune thief sagas. I find it very poor that this only contains the maps for the main book and not battles beyond the sea and rune thief books.

The maps are both gridded and ungridded which I find quite nice.

Love this. I'm drawing on various sources to set up an early Medieval Campaign world. Liking the The Runemaster Class especially. Is there any chance of being able to get the book printed?

The Quickstart of an excellent 5e setting. Beautiful. Nothing else to say.

I jokingly refer to Historia as "grimdark Ironclaw" but that's not really fair; aside from the furries and the European Renaissance vibe, Historia is a whole different animal.

It advertises itself as a campaign setting for DnD5e, but Historia feels like its own game due to its completely different character options. Races and Subraces are here called Familiae and Species, and include most European (with some exceptions) mammals, and a tremendous number of different avians; no cold-blooded creatures, no fantasy races. Classes are instead called Professions and are perfectly tailored to theworld of Historia, revealing a great deal about the flavor of the setting and the flavor of the adventures it is intended to support. Instead of Backgrounds the designers went with what they call Ventures, which encourage players to think about where their characters came from and where they're trying to go with their lives. Other games have tried to encourage players in this manner before, but while 5e's backgrounds ask you who you are, and some game's goals ask you what you want, ventures ask you to think about how who you are led you to want what you want. Seems to me this sort of approach should help even the most roleplaying-challenged players think at least a little bit more about why they're playing how they're playing. Murder-hobo-ing can be fun, and I think Historia could support it if you wanted to just use the setting as window-dressing, but I like the attempt to promote deeper roleplaying. Factions and Careers round out the character options, both granting certain benefits at different ranks. Many factions are predictable, some aren't (keep an eye out for the austere pugs), but they all seem like fine options for promoting further characterization and helping the gamemaster set hooks and create plots, while Careers provide a finishing touch that can help a character lean in to a particular archetype or diversify their skill set a bit.

As far as the setting itself, I don't want to give much away other than what it says in the marketing material; Historia is a grim fantasy European Renaissance setting populated with anthropomorphic characters. Whether you're here for the furries or because you're looking for renaissance options for 5e (or both!), the world of Historia has you covered. Nations and factions are interesting, as are the world's notable personalities, and the character options are carefully crafted to add to the worldbuilding.

And it's all brought to life with the tremendous amount of absolutely fantastic art. Perhaps it's just that I adore the style they focused on, but for my money Historia has some of the best art of any RPG ever published. Production quality overall is fantastic (it would seem the language issues mentioned in early reviews have long since been solved), and to be honest it's the art and polish I saw in the free materials here on DTRPG that led me to pick up this core book, and I couldn't be happier that I did. My regular table has yet to play it, but first impressions have been great all around, and I'm looking forward to running people through the adventure book.

Backtracking to the art because I love it so much, I went so far as to buy everything Mana Project has put out in hardcopy for Historia simply because it's a great "coffee table RPG", the kind of thing you leave in a semi-conspicuous place so curious potential players pick it up and browse through it, and I have to say it's one of the most browse-friendly RPGs I've seen in a while, the kind of book that gets players thinking about who they'd want to play. Add the fact that it's a 5e module, meaning if your table knows 5e they already know how to play Historia, and it's a very appealing game indeed.

Ten out of ten, would buy again (and in fact I did).

There is almost no setting material in this document, it's pretty much all "how to tell stories" and "narrative authority" and so on. It's very much designed in the "RPGs as storycrafting" / "RPGs as thematic exploration" approach, gaming from a directorial stance -- most of the material and mechanics are about creating the nominal flow and feel of an episode of the show. Characters and ships don't have any mechanics beyond a set of vague "narrative tags" that don't tell us much of anything. There's very little on how to create a new character or assign new traits over time. Evidently traits can be blocked from being used after a failed roll, meaning the characters almost deteriorate over the course of a "session"?

For gamers who want to explore engaging characters doing interesting things in the Cowboy Bebop setting, who prefer a character-POV / actor stance -- rather than trying to force repeated rehashings of a story structure -- this will be a disappointment.

Historia is a dark, low magic fantasy setting for 5e with anthro animals, and it delivers a great piece which is only downplayed by its english translation (the company is italian, I believe)

Visually, the book is stunning. Each and every art is a masterpiece, with a style similar to ye olde oil paintings. The colors, the light contrast, the poses, the action (when depicted)... everything contains so much detail that I'd recommend those that aren't interested in the setting itself to buy AT LEAST the artbook for the sake of the quality of the images contained within.

Content wise, the ideas in Historia are fantastic too. As said above, Historia is less magic than the standard 5e experience, meaning the classes had to be redone. We do still have casters and magical warriors, but most classes are strictly mundane, which, in a way, bring something refreshing to the table, and reinforce the darker world proposed. I want to point out theres a whole section discussing how to deal with pets and the common version of the animals depicted as playable species, presenting 3 solutions which are bound to fit the way you wish to tell your story. Backgrounds have been dismembered, with their traits (personality, ideals, bonds, and flaws) scattered throughout the other options you might make at character creation; in particular, Ventures are a new choice you make instead of Backgrounds, which set some objectives for your character through some quick questions, while also helping you define why they left their normal life behind in order to go on adventures. The book also includes Factions and even a Career (aka profession) system, both with a simple progression table, granting benefits as you raise in ranks. These last 3 sections (Ventures, Factions and Careers) also come with a template form meant to allow you, player or DM, to create new motivations, groups and titles to better portray your setting and character.

With all that said, while I myself purchased almost the whole product line, there is one single thing that tarnishes the gold here (for me, at least)

The English translation; its the only reason I'm not giving this product a 5-star review

There's no need to go into greater detail where others have already pointed this out, but reading the book might be a difficult process; its by no means impossible to understand the rulings, but it might require the reader a second take to actually understand some triggers and effects. Depending on the group you're dealing with, you might even not reach a consensus on how to apply certain abilities by RAW due to poor wording. I suppose the italian version might give some straighter answers to whatever question one might have, but since I can't speak italian (yet), I haven't read that version, so I can't speak for myself about it.

All in all, this IS a great product and I fully recommend it, but be warned the the (english) writing isn't well revised and you might need some patience to understand it fully

These are some of the best-looking fantasy horror tokens money can buy. Whether you are into Nightfell or not, buy the bestiary or not (I recommend you do, no matter what system you're running), these images are so evocative you'll have no trouble rolling your own monsters just from looking at them. Throw these bad boys onto your VTT and I guarantee at least one of your players is gonna ask you where you got them. They're that good.

While an interesting introduction to the world of Nightfell the translation leaves a lot to be desired, with common amateurish spelling mistakes, editing errors and grammatical peculiarities making it hard to deciphered in some places, however the world and general idea is intriguing enough to promise a truly amazing full release if these issues can be resolved.

A fantastic game that puts story first. We've played a few playtest and every single time it's been an amazing success. The book is full of great ideas and the system is extremely simple but engaging. I was looking for an alternative to HeroQuest and Fate to try out weird setting ideas and I found my home with Not The End

Absolutely awesome. Without a doubt one of the best adventures I have run. However I would love to get a Fantasy Grounds Mod

Awful english localisation. Missing words and the change from second to third person in the same sentence when explaining class/subclass features (you gain - the player playing the character; they gain - the characters that are this class/subclass) makes it hard to understand when something affects the PC and when it affects other targets. Capitalizations are sometime missing. The problems go on and on.

It's a real shame because the product has a huge potential of becoming a classic. Even if you're not tempted to play the setting (which is very interesting), you can take what you like from it and mix it in your own homebrews. For example, even if you don't want to play in a Renaissance Fantasy Setting full of beastsfolk, I can easily see someone using all the other player options to run a campaign in something like Innistrad.

There are lots of great ideas undermined by this translation. I'm sure the original italian version is vastly superior. This product doesn't suffer from a lack of imagination and talend, regardless if we're talking about mechanics or artwork (the artwork is superb), but from a bad case of poor localisation.

If you don't know italian, but you're willing to persevere through the read to make sense of the RAI, you'll have at your disposal an amazing 5e derivate system. Just be sure to make notes onwith how you think things are supposed to work.

If you're like me, don't bother for the moment.

PS: I'll gladly edit my review if things change for the better. I really hope this book improves. I want to see it succed, but it currently needs more proofreading and editing.

PPS: I'm not a native english speaker.

The images are nice, but the actual few battle maps aren't really useful for Roll20 since the squares are already drawn and are hard to match with the grid. If I buy a product I'd like to use it without having to spend time to make it work.